


Red and Everything and the Ways They Broke

by mariigold86



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Antarctic Empire, But not exactly, Gen, Mentioned Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Past, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Ranbutler my beloved, The Egg (Dream SMP), The Masquerade, Time Travel, Web Series: Tales from the SMP, basically a fix-it fic, no beta we die like peedog, read the prompt and it got away from me, somehow its both of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:01:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29550375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariigold86/pseuds/mariigold86
Summary: It is red and it is true and in its vastness there is everything. It is life and death and a cycle which cannot be broken because there is nothing to break. The Egg is all there is, because Butler is the Egg and he is its purpose.He has no doubts, until he does.And like a seed in his throat, it grows until he cannot swallow it any longer.or: I hold Ranboo's oc in my grubby little hands and tell him how cool I think he is for 3000 words
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 53





	Red and Everything and the Ways They Broke

**Author's Note:**

  * For [far2late](https://archiveofourown.org/users/far2late/gifts).



> inspired by Pond on twitter (@far2early psst go drop a follow and tell them I sent you), who wanted someone to write their Ranbutler idea. well. uh. here it is!!

The Egg was  _ everything. _

It was everything because there was nothing else — nothing else to see or to love or to conquer or to become. It was the nothing, whole and unadulterated in its vastness, just as it was the blossoming light in the corners where nothing could not be, where nothing truly was incapable. In those corners of blooming heat, Butler only knew red.

The Egg was that red, more than it was everything and nothing and light and dark. Red was complete. It was all-encompassing. It was Butler.

This was the one truth that Butler knew, the one thing he could rely on even when everything else fell to pieces around him in glorious, shattering finality.

The Egg was Butler and the weight of the sword in his hand, steady as black iron where it sat, dormant at his side. The Egg was Butler and the commands that rang out in between his ears, heady and violent and sharp the way a dull knife cuts. The Egg was Butler and the body at his feet, and it was still and dark and  _ everything. _

With each new victim that fell to his sword, Butler was more and more sure of the red. It ran like rivers from his fingers, and it sang to him the truth that was his purpose. And his purpose was true, because it was everything, and it was nothing, and it was dark and light and blooming and sharp and still and red, and it was the body he cradled to his chest and the tears streaming down his cheeks and the wetness that pooled in his collar and it was  _ truly beautiful. _

And Butler had no regrets.

Butler had no regrets, until he did.

This didn’t make sense; servants did not have regrets. They had orders, and then they followed them, and then they waited to be called upon again. 

But something was festering. It was a weed cracking concrete, and Butler did not appreciate being broken. The Egg was complete, and he was the Egg. 

In the quiet of night, when his master had long since retired to bed, and when the Egg lulled itself into a false dormancy, Butler picked at the weed. He picked at it until his fingers were blistered and sore, and then he tore at it, and then was digging into the clay, through the cracks in the road, and still it sat.

Butler did not weep, for he was red.

He tried again, because the Egg was resilient, and the red knew all, and he would find a way to silence the quiet thing that was growing its roots in his core. He clawed and scraped and ripped until his knuckles were white and his blood was violet under his skin. Butler fell into a fitful sleep, and pretended into the deafening everything of his own mind that he was in control.

The next morning, Butler had to ignore the taproot that split his ribcage, because there were arrangements to be made. The Egg, in its vastness, was hungry. According to his master, that meant they would need sacrifices, which meant a party, which meant that Butler’s sword would need to be polished.

The mansion itself was already spotless. There was no need for preparations when Butler was constantly in a state of doing just that. There was no dust here to trace footprints through the ballroom, nor family to empty the kegs of wine that lined the cellars. Most of their time was spent waiting and listening and readying. 

It was as he studied his reflection in the blade (he was the Egg and the Egg was him, and the Egg was beautiful and that made him something to be admired) that the first guest arrived.

Swiftly, Butler made his way to the balcony, and pressed himself to the railing as the newcomer was ushered into the foyer. 

“Hello. Who is this?” Came his master’s question, and his voice was sweeping and commanding and as red as a beating heart.

“Uh, I’m just– just in the area.” The man’s mask was skewed where it sat on the bridge of his nose. “Why, who are you?”

Butler could smell the peasantry from where he sat, and it wrinkled his nose. His master was not so similarly concerned by the inordinance, instead dipping his head with a graceful smile, and proclaiming, “I am Sir Billiam the third, the owner of this mansion.” Butler envied the elegance with which he dealt with the other man.

And the man was much to deal with. He fiddled with the door handles, tugged at the leafy ferns which swaddled the entryway, and tracked black soil onto the carpet with his strange shoes. It made Butler wince away from the scene, and he had to hold his hands over his ears lest he give himself away.

Then they were ascending the staircase, and his name was echoing through the spacious hallway, and Butler quickly pulled himself up and set his hands behind his back. This part, he understood. It had become less of an act through the years and more of a mask, one which he slipped on over a toothy grin. It was complacent, and it did not speak, did not even breath or else it was a burden. Butler, though, was no burden, because the Egg was nothing, and he was the Egg. 

He slipped between the party-goers like oil, easy and unseen. They asked for drinks, and he filled their glasses. They wanted entertainment, and he directed their banter. 

That man, though, who called himself Karl only when he had finally been backed into the corner of a name, he was water. Time and time again, as Butler moved to traverse the gaps and hide behind his master’s eloquence, Karl called attention to him.

“Do you have a name?” He would ask, and Butler would shake his head and bite down on his petulant tongue which wished to tell him exactly what he’d like to be called. “Can he even talk?” Then all eyes were on him, curious but not suspicious, and his master had to redirect the flow of conversation elsewhere.

The Egg was hungry, though. This was the one thing that mattered. Karl, in his insolence and his weakness, did not. How could he, when the red was all that was and ever had been?

So when the lights dimmed, and the mansion grew cold and keen, Butler assumed his purpose. He drew his sword, and in the vastness that was whole and blooming, he passed the hilt to the dainty, gloved hands of the woman in blue.

Lyaria became as red as a live wire, and set off down the corridor with the singular purpose that was Butler’s and his master’s and the Egg’s. She became beautiful, where before she had been simple, backlit by the violence of truth. Butler watched her go, and he hummed from deep in his chest, around the weed that grew there.

He waited for six minutes there in the ballroom before the lights flickered on again, sparking in the chandelier and along the sconces on the wall. In the stillness of regrouping, Butler leaned back against the bar. It was beautiful, this place all to the Egg’s self. There was no foreign particle pressing itself into the air, no fly buzzing through the chambers. Just a thick confusion that settled on the carpets like snow.

Then, there was Karl again, melting the quiet with his bold irrationality. “Hello?” He called out, and then that bravery returned to the other guests, and soon they were all clustered around the piano. Lyaria slipped the thin sword back into Butler’s hands, and he slid it into its sheath with a satisfied smile.

They talked, and they pondered, and they threw out accusations with wild abandon. Butler’s master played the part of a gracious host with near-perfect execution. In turn, Butler bowed his head and let those silly suggestions bounce off his locked lips and nestle into the rug. 

Lyaria herself hardly remembered where she was by the time those accusations directed themselves onto her. She patted her lips with a silk handkerchief and laughed nervously at Karl’s questions. She was a lady, and ladies did not murder people. 

“That is a solid defense,” stated Oliver from behind his copper mask, and the other guests nodded their heads in agreement. It was pathetic. 

But it was also useful, and as the lights went out once more, Butler passed the sword into the hands of the copper-masked man, and wedged himself back into the walls where even the spiders could not reach him.

The night went on. It was slow, tedious work, but the rewards were red and bright, and they burned in the space in Butler’s chest that made home to what was everything. Lyaria fell next, and her pale blue dress was soaked in truth where she had been slotted between round barrels of dried fruits and cheeses. Then went Sebastian, folded in on himself in a warped wood dresser. James died, slumped over a bed in a spacious guest room, dark hair brushing the floor as he was suspended in his final moments. Oliver was the last to go, quick and clean, a blow dealt by Butler’s own practiced hands, and his body was left crumpled across the entryway. 

That left one. One who had escaped the egg for too long, who had been too loud and too vibrant and too knowing in this space that had been built to kill and to eat. 

Butler took his time as he returned to the Egg. There was no need to rush, now. They had won. The Egg would not let Karl leave, not now that he was so close.

From behind the false wall, Butler could just barely hear the speech that his master gave, in all of its showmanship. He couldn’t help but laugh as he pushed into the chamber, swinging his sword in a lazy arc and moving to block the exit.

Here, in all of its glory, was everything. The Egg sang, and Butler basked in its primordial song, as discordant as it was beautiful. It was honey, viscous as it dripped from his hair and down his waistcoat, until all of him was bathed in sweet, syrupy worship. 

It was burning and melting and icy and thick and song and dance and everything and nothing and it was the steel of his blade in Karl’s chest and the pleas that hung crooked in the simmering air and the sacrifice that bled heavy into the red earth.

“I’m sorry, Karl,” Butler said, and the taproot in his ribcage was honest.

But Karl was not right. He did not fall into the nothing, nor did he become the everything. He was neither darkness nor light as he faded. His body became something else entirely, drifting on a white wind and spiraling into a thing that could not be described with words that Butler knew. Karl was gone. Karl was  _ not _ even though he had just  _ been _ .

And the Egg was still hungry.

The Egg still sang, even as Butler pulled his sword from the nothing where Karl should have laid, even as he wiped what should have been blood on the thick corduroy of his uniform. It sang louder than his master pleaded, louder than anyone could have, for the Egg was everything and Butler was the Egg, and there was red where a voice should have been, and where his vision should have been, and where reason should have been. His master’s body, though — that was real. It was not red where it fell against tangled bloodvines. It was not red where the man’s eyes rolled back in his head, and where his arms splayed to reveal the vibrant stain spreading across his cotton shirt. The weed was not red as it bloomed in all its glory from Butler’s gaping mouth.

He choked on the horror, on the regret, on the guilt; it had all built inside of him for months (years, had it been?) until finally its petals had spread to drink in the sun that was a dawning realization. Cold terror gripped Butler around his middle, and it was the first thing he had felt in a long, long time. 

Butler held the face of his master — had they been friends, once upon a time? Had he hated this man? — and wept until his throat was raw and the salt stung his chapped lips. He wasn’t sure who he was crying for. A dark part of him knew that it was for himself.

He had lost so much. Butler had taken so much, too, and none of it he had kept as his own. He had buried it in the earth and called it truth, and then lied to himself in the quiet corners of his own mind in a cycle of deep-set betrayal. 

Apologies leaked from the corners of Butler’s lips, and they dotted Billiam’s skin like tiny stars, each burning with its own light. He could count them, if only they would stop coming. As he watched them wink in the faint glow cast by the bloodvines, Butler felt the haze once more descending upon his mind. It was red and it was everything, and he knew these, because he was the Egg, was he not? He was the Egg and the Egg was him, and it told him this in its crooning song, and he could have leaned into it for how thick it hung in the air.

And yet.

And yet the taproot was a dagger pressed against his heart, forcing it to drum even as it quieted into the darkness and the nothing. It was the cold sting of ice in his veins despite the blossoming light in the corners of his vision. It was real against all the whispered falsehoods echoing through the chamber. It was green and true and living where this place could only kill. Butler did the only thing he could do. He pulled his sword from the broken noble and he ran.

Butler ran until the mansion was swallowed by tall, thin pine trees. He ran until his sins were sour and mealy on his tongue. He ran until his breath was stolen from him by the stinging cold of winter. And when Butler couldn’t run any further, he collapsed in the snow and wondered if he might die there without red to give him purpose.

Instead, he pulled himself up against a thick-footed spruce and let his head fall onto his knees. The quiet was airy and fluid. It made Butler’s mind reel to try and process it. There was birdsong, somewhere far off, and it was a song he hadn’t heard in a long time. It was green like the flower blooming in his chest. It sang of the people they had lured to the mansion, of their lives and families. It sang of Oliver’s grandchildren, announcing their presence like firecrackers. It sang of Lyaria’s wedding dress, painted in the deepest cobalt blue that money could buy. It sang of Sebastian, arms spread and fingers dancing as he told stories around a roaring hearth. It sang of James, and a photo album in his lap. 

The birds did not sing of Karl. Butler had a hard time believing that Karl could be killed. It did not sing of Billiam, either. Billiam had loved the Egg.

Butler stole this moment to linger in his regret. He would need to keep moving, because to stay was to freeze, and he had come too far to die. 

He had come too far to die, and yet he felt as if he had been killed in the chamber along with Billiam. The sword that had taken the other man’s life glittered with the iron of Butler’s own blood. It was heavy at his side.

Snow crunched under his dress shoes as he pushed back against the tree. The leather did little to insulate his feet, and he could feel numbness creeping through his toes and up to his ankles. His hands, too, burned with a false heat, and they were an ugly purple in his pockets where the wind still bit at them. Maybe this was dying, then, this unending cold. Perhaps the frost in the air was his undoing, a sword in its own right. It would be best not to fight the fates, not after all he had done to spite their efforts.

Butler fell to his side, and instantly he felt the ice through his clothes, sticking him to the earth. It was grounding and freeing all at once, he thought, as the sun sank behind him below the bristling treeline. He would return to the vastness he once tried to claim for himself. His hubris would be rewarded by truth, not the lies he had called everything and nothing. 

There was an angel soaring over the trees. This must have been death, then, in all its finality. It was pale blue against a cloudless sky, with the speckled wings of a white owl. They floated on an intangible wind, and Butler decided that this was beautiful, if nothing else could be. Then the angel was falling, and the magic in his armor caught the setting sun, so bright he was gold. 

Then Butler’s eyelids drooped, and green threatened to consume his vision. He fought it — the angel was so close, he had to behold that which had come to claim his life. But he blinked, and the side of his head was warm in the gloved hands of the golden angel. Another blink, and he was nestled into the softest fabric he had ever felt on his skin, and it was white and speckled like wings. A final blink, and a castle soared over the mountains, and it too was gold.

Butler did not die. He woke in a small bed in a small room. The angel was kind and gentle, and he was neither red nor green. He spoke of an Empire. He spoke of an _everything._

**Author's Note:**

> I think my all-time favorite part of writing fanfiction for the Dream SMP is frantically googling the vods and skipping through the timestamps to conduct research. Nothing fuels me more than feeling like a dutiful little intern as I note down everything those minecraft men say in my google doc. Simply fantastic.
> 
> ANYWAYS this is my first oneshot ever. So hooray for that. Ranbutler was simply too cool to not write about, so thank you to Pond for giving me the opportunity to explore his character! I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it.
> 
> Don't be shy, drop a kudos if you enjoyed and let me know your thoughts in the comments!! Or you could follow me on twitter @Mariigold86 and come tell me your Tales theories there >:)))
> 
> Subscribe if you want to be notified for when my big boy fic drops this week, or you could come back on Sunday at exactly 8:00pm EST and you might just get lucky idk who am I to say
> 
> Either way, thank you so much for reading! Until next time :D


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